We arrived back in bangkok fairly early in the morning, after a month in vietnam the drive from the airport to khao san road everything seemed totally civilized and futuristic, a complete opposite to when we first arrived fresh from england when it had looked like dirty chaos completely uncontrolled.
we went straight to our 'friend' named earth who we had booked everything through during our times in bangkok, and also shared a few buckets with him on the first crazy night there. Me and greg organised a bus to Krabi in southern thailand which left that night. sally stayed a day to meet some friends and booked her scuba diving course. The bus to krabi took over 12 hours, with a change in the middle. at some point in the night the scum on the bus crept into the luggage hold and managed to get into my bag (must have got lucky with the code on my lock) and take my mp3 player which i stupidly left in there. that put me in a fairly pissed off mood and our arrival in krabi didnt do much to help. it was a dirty old town with nothing atall of any interest to us. so we stayed a night with the plan of leaving on a boat to Phi Phi the next day. however wehn we started looking into accomodation it was all well out of our budget so we changed plans and headed back north a little to visit Phuket. Patong beach in phuket is the most touristy place we have been, lots of russians and germans and australians, not many backpackers as its a holiday resort. so basically we had a holiday. Scut from home flew down to meet us for his last few days before going home. so we all went out and had a few mental nights, not much to write about on here but some great great memories.
after the chaos in patong i was looking forward to a rest from the sessions, however the full moon party was in two days so we had to get over to Ko phangan where it is held. 12000 people partying on the beach with lots of drugs and drink and fire throwing and every type of music. we partied along with everyone else until the next day and the sun was well up in the sky again, then suddenly greg is nowhere to be seen. after a brief search i figured we would just meet back at the room so after a long taxi ride fell asleep in the room. woke up at 4 in the afternoon and greg still wasnt home. i panicked, the hangover not helping atall. managed to get the owners of the hostel to take me out searching, bars, hospital, everywhere!! basically given up hope and through he was in a ditch i went back and lay on my bed thinking, panicking. two minutes later he strolled in. having spenth the day looking after a girl he met who got sick (largely thanks to greg)
well and truely unable to go out for at least a week we decided to go to the neighbouring island called Ko Tao, famous for the diving. we booked ourselves into Crystal dive resort to do the open water divers course. which took four days of pretty intense tests and tasks on dives etc. we both really enjoyed it and went out to party when we qualified, then we decided to stay on for two more days to complete our Advanced divers course which was five more dives. peak performance bouyancy dive, navigation dive, night dive, deep dive (30m), and fish identification dive. on the deep dive we saw lots of bullsharks and great reef sharks aswell as barracuda and batfish. it was unreal looking up from 30m below the surface and seeing the pinacle nearly reaching the surface completely swarming with bright fish and coral. impossible to describe.
After a bit more partying in ko tao watching some muay thai with all the guys we met on our course and heading to a few bars, seeing in lotus bar that the raised platform was now closed off because our group had broken it when the celebrations got out of hand after the open water course. We got a night boat from ko tao back to the mainland and a bus back to patong for another couple of nights to see people we got to know on our previous visit. the night boat had forty people laying shoulder to shoulder on thin mattresses and feet interlocking with those opposite, was a good laugh until one group got too drunk and kept everyone awake wit their singing for hours.
after some time drinking in patong we flew from phuket airport to kuala lumpar and arrived there at six pm. we had another flight from there to Bali at six AM so had 12 long hours waiting for the plane. we knew sally was on the same flight so we waited for her and it was good to see her again and have the three back together.
Now in Bali, have been here for about four days, its the hottest place we ave been by quite some way although its cloudy today, had a night out and some beach time, took bikes yesterday to find a deserted beach but just got lost in traffic in incredible heat so gave up and came back to the room, went and brought 16dvds to add to the 14 i bought in hanoi. they cost 50p each. and we hired a dvdplayer and sat up most of the night watching movies and eating crap. possibly do the same again tonight as me and greg are going diving on a big shipwreck tomorow. really looking forward to that. Then the day after tomorow is the big flight to sydney, neary christmas now but im ignoring it. worried that this part of the trip is over... already!!! and i have to leave south east asia. i think will definatly be back. almost tempted to stay for a while more. gotta keep going though, hope australia isnt shit.
